Procesos y resultados educativos

In the 1850s Russia and France went to war partly to determine which coun- try the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, at that time the ruler of Palestine, would allow to act as protector of the area’s Christian holy sites. The matter of which European country would take precedence in Palestine was not resolved until the defeat of the Ottomans in World War i, when the Allied Supreme Council at a conference in San Remo, Italy, in April 1920 decided that Great Britain should be granted a League of Nations Mandate over Palestine as part of the post-war settlements previously reached in Paris and London.

World War i had devastated the remote, somewhat neglected and under- developed Palestine. The population at the end of World War i had declined from around 738,000 in 1914 to approximately 690,000 – 630,000 Arabs (12 per cent of whom were Christians) and 60,000 Jews – in 1918. The British governed Palestine as if it were a Crown colony. The result was an increase in population, prosperity and polarization, all three of which contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of suspicion and fear and, frequently, to conflict. Precise population figures for Palestine during the mandate are problematic and difficult to come by. Borders were imprecise and porous, many local Arabs nomadic and elusive, birth rate figures unreliable, Jewish movements for much of British rule were outgoing as well as incoming, and both sides contest the accuracy of any figures other than their own. What can be said, however, is that by the outbreak of World War ii there had been a very sig- nificant demographic alteration in Palestine. In the space of thirty years, the total population more than doubled, life expectancy extended, and the per- centage of Jews rose from around 11 to more than 30 per cent. British rule prompted a major transformation of the economy and infrastructure. Post and telegraphic services were upgraded, railways extended, roads, port facilities, schools and hospitals built, and the standard of living in towns and on the land rose substantially.

The area of mandated Palestine (excluding Transjordan) was about 10,162 square miles (26,320 square km), about the size of New Hampshire or one- third of the size of Scotland. In addition to Palestine, Great Britain also acquired Turkish Middle Eastern lands and German colonial territories as mandates. One of the most difficult questions facing the allied powers and the Arab and Zionist leaders was exactly where the boundaries of these mandates should be drawn. As finally drawn up at San Remo, the Palestine mandate borders in- cluded the area known as Transjordan. Both Arabs and Zionists were unhappy

with these boundaries. The World Zionist Organization (wzo) had presented a proposal to the Peace Conference in Paris in late February 1919 indicating the area Zionists sought as a Jewish homeland, by which they meant a state. This proposal provides a revealing, if uncomfortable, insight into Zionist thinking at the beginning of the Mandate period, and perhaps even into Israeli goals since the declaration of the state in 1948. The area to be included extended south from a line just north of Sidon (Lebanon), extending eastward to the Hejaz railway and then south along that railway on the eastern side of the River Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba. The southern boundary was a line drawn to include all the Sinai Peninsula to the western boundary of the Mediter- ranean Sea. Jerusalem was, of course, included as part of the Jewish state.

While the French rejected and the British ignored the boundaries pro- posed by the wzo, us president Woodrow Wilson urged their adoption. Achieving these boundaries has remained a seductive idea to most Zionists ever since 1919. In November 1947 the Jewish Agency accepted the partition lines suggested by the un General Assembly, but the Declaration of Inde- pendence read by David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv on 14 May 1948 deliberately made no reference to the state’s borders. As was the case with the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen colonies that were to become the United States, the reason for the omission was, if not the explicit desire to expand, to leave the option on the table. Ben-Gurion had long believed the natural north- ern boundary of Israel to be the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Israeli policy-makers, regardless of party alignment, have remained remarkably consistent in seeking to establish or maintain Israeli control over much of the area proposed by the wzo in 1919, especially the northern head-waters region of the Golan and southern Lebanon. Only two, Moshe Sharett and Yitzhak Rabin (and possibly Shimon Peres), deviated significantly from the general pattern of securing a military presence in what Israeli lead- ers see as these vitally strategic areas ensuring Israel’s water supply. Sharett was prime minister very briefly, replaced by Ben-Gurion for his ‘soft’ approach to Arabs, Rabin was assassinated, and Peres quickly retreated to the main- stream position. Israel’s first achievement in this respect in the war of 1948–9 was to include within its territory an area in the north bounded on both sides by land designated by the un General Assembly to be included in the Arab state. It also gained more of the Negev than the un allocated, although only part of Jerusalem was obtained. In 1956 Israel sought to incorporate the Sinai

and Gaza Strip but, following a successful military campaign, withdrew under pressure from the us and uk. In 1967 Israel was more successful. In addition to occupying the area west of the River Jordan, and the Gaza Strip, it gained valu- able territory in the Golan Heights, which ensured the Israeli state virtually unchallenged control of the upper reaches of the River Jordan beyond Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee or Lake Tiberias) and the strategic heights of Mount Herman. In 2005, in the face of continuing Palestinian harassment, Israel again withdrew from the Gaza Strip, but remains in the occupied terri- tory (it calls it the contested territory) of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Ironically, in some ways Lebanon has presented Israel with its greatest problems. Despite the fact that Lebanon is not Palestine and that none of the complica- tions of contested sovereignty between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians that surround the West Bank exist in the case of Lebanon, Israel has invaded Lebanon on three separate occasions and occupied the southern self-declared ‘security zone’ for more than 25 years, only to withdraw under fire in 2006.

The arrangements agreed upon at San Remo after World War i were officially recognized in the Treaty of Sèvres signed in August 1920. In March 1921, in part to clarify and hopefully resolve at least one of Britain’s ambigu- ous promises to its Arab allies, British colonial secretary Winston Churchill authorized that the Palestine mandate east of the River Jordan be adminis- tered separately under the nominal control of the Hashemite Emir Abdullah, elder son of Arab ally Sharif al-Husayn of Mecca, answerable to the high commissioner. The League of Nations accepted this arrangement. Technically the two areas remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates.1_{This arrangement satisfied no}

one in Palestine west of the River Jordan. Abdullah’s brother Feisal was threatening to attempt to reclaim Syria by force and, in August, the British installed Feisal as King of Iraq.

In June 1922 Churchill, in debates over the future of Palestine in the House of Commons, reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration while limiting Jewish immigration to meet the ‘economic absorptive capacity’ of Palestine. In early July 1922 the House approved accepting the Mandate and it was quickly ratified by the League of Nations. In September 1922 the British excluded Transjordan as an area in which Jews would be permitted to settle as part of a Jewish homeland. The British officially took control of the mandate in September 1923.

The decision to grant Great Britain the Mandate of Palestine was the cul- mination of secret negotiations that had been taking place since 1915 between France, Italy and Britain over the future partition of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat. The welter of secret agreements and public declarations both dur- ing and immediately following the hostilities resulted in misunderstanding, confusion and contradictions that have plagued the Middle East ever since. The British and French had reached an agreement on spheres of influence in the Sykes Picot Agreement of May 1916, which they revised in 1919. The British sphere of influence was to include Palestine and the vilayet (or province) of Mosul (in present-day Iraq), and in return Britain would support French influence in Syria and Lebanon. To compound what were intricate and complicated wartime negotiations, the British, through army officer Colonel T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), had promised the local Arabs of the Hejaz independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East in exchange for their support of the British against the Turks, and Egyptian high commissioner Sir Henry McMahon in correspondence with Sharif as-Sayyid Abdullah bin al- Husayn of Mecca had promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support.

The basic document setting out the responsibilities and powers of the mandatory power was the mandate instrument drawn up in London in July 1922. This document incorporated the Balfour Declaration, adding to the complexities facing Great Britain, and to the anxiety of the local and nearby Arab populations. The declaration had been issued by the British Cabinet during the war on 2 November 1917, in response to intercession by British Zionists headed by Chaim Weizmann. The mandate document opened with the statement:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declara- tion originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish commu- nities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.2

Several articles of the mandate document made seemingly contradictory and incompatible demands of the British. These articles required the manda- tory power to establish the political, administrative and economic conditions necessary to secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, and at the same time to develop self-governing institutions and encourage local auton- omy for all the inhabitants of Palestine. Britain was to recognize the Zionist organization as the appropriate Jewish agency to bring about the establish- ment of the Jewish national home, and to facilitate Jewish immigration with- out prejudging the rights and position of the Arab population.

The issues that lay at the heart of the Arab–Israeli conflict today took shape during this period. All the parties involved in the conflict formulated positions that remain virtually unchanged almost a century later. At this early stage in the evolution of the conflict an international dimension played an ever present and important role in shaping events. The British were influenced by wider imperial concerns, the Jews by the world Zionist movement, and the Pales- tinian Arabs by events in the surrounding Arab world. The rise of Adolf Hitler in Europe, and restrictive us immigration laws, in particular, played a vital role in determining the rate of Jewish migration into Palestine. In their narra- tives of the period, both Arabs and Jews have sought to blame the British, or each other, for any events that were undesirable from their perspective, while refusing to accept any responsibility themselves. In reality, the majority on both sides viewed each other with fear, distrust, ignorance, arrogance and hostility.

Leaders recognized that two emerging national movements were fighting for supremacy over the future of Palestine. Zionist leaders, intent on transform- ing Palestine into a Jewish homeland (by which the majority meant a national state), had contempt for the local Arabs, and oscillated between arguing on one hand for their complete removal and on the other hand arguing that they could civilize and uplift the Arabs by introducing expertise and finan- cial resources that would benefit all the inhabitants of Palestine. The Arabs of Palestine could not decide whether to accept those Jews content to practise their religion in traditional ways or to oppose all Jews on the grounds that if the majority Zionist immigrants achieved their goals the Arab way of life would be destroyed. Disagreements and tensions within each group were almost as profound as the divisions separating the two blocs. In the end, the triumph of those on both sides who advocated the use of force when confronted

with opposition to the realization of their nationalist ambitions became so routine as to make long-term military confontation almost inevitable.

During British rule, relations between Arabs and Jews deteriorated dramatically. At first both Arabs and Jews had welcomed the British as liberators. Arabs believed they would be freed from the oppressive rule of the Ottomans and achieve independence. Zionist Jews, who had begun ar- riving in relatively significant numbers over the previous 30 years or so, believed that the British would facilitate the establishment of a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people in Palestine. In the next 28 years the ambitions of both groups were frustrated, although Britain did favour Jewish at the expense of Arab aspirations. The Arabs were particularly disillusioned. By 1948 the Jewish population had increased tenfold, from 60,000 to 650,000. Adhering to its 1917 promise, the British administrations had permitted Jewish purchases of land, the establishment of settlements, towns, industries, banks, schools and even an army.

The actions of the local Palestinian Arab population – Muslim and Christian – and the Arabs of the surrounding region toward the Jews migrating to Palestine prior to 1948 has to be understood in the context of British (and French) conduct in relation to the eastern Mediterranean following World War i. Britain and France had promised and encouraged them to think that if they supported the allies during the war they would be granted independ- ence. Not only were the Arabs not granted independence, the very countries that had made the promises became their rulers as mandatory powers. Much of today’s hypersensitivity of Palestinians stems from what they see is a Western, or Christian, failure to recognize their circumstances and their viewpoint. The West de-historicizes the Palestinian experience while, encouraged by Zionist historiography, it embraces the Jewish historical experience.

At the beginning of the mandate, the British were well aware of Arab hos- tility to the Zionist project. As early as the 1890s, leaders of Arab communities had expressed their opposition to Jewish land purchases. They recognized that land ownership was an essential first step in creating a political entity. The issues were not merely the increase in the number of Jews entering Pales- tine or even British acquiescence of the new arrivals in terms of land purchases and settlements. It was more British encouragement of Jewish participation in the governance of Palestine and the recognition of Jewish political autonomy. It is difficult to imagine the depth of disappointment, bitterness, frustration

and anger Arab leaders and their followers in Palestine felt at the way things were going during the British mandate. The overwhelming sense gripping the population was one of betrayal. The post-war settlements were supposed to take account of the national aspirations of peoples like themselves who had previously been subjected to foreign rule. United States president Woodrow Wilson, however, had been unable to enforce the implementation of the provisions for independence contained in his Fourteen Points, and Palesti- nians, as did other Middle Eastern Arab populations, experienced a twentieth- century version of nineteenth-century colonialism.

The Arabs could accept increased Jewish migration but not statehood, especially when it had been denied to them. Although historically Jews living under Islamic rule were never free from discrimination, they were rarely sub- jected to persecution. Bernard Lewis has observed that:

The situation of Jews living under Islamic rule was never as bad as Christendom at its worst, nor ever as good as in Christendom at its best. There is nothing in Islamic history to parallel the Spanish expulsion and Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or the Nazi Holo- caust; there is also nothing to compare with the progressive emanci- pation and acceptance accorded to Jews in the democratic West during the past three centuries.3

Life was far more precarious for Jews living in Christendom than it was for Jews living within the Islamic Caliphate. It is crucial to recall that Zionism, and therefore Israel, is an Ashkenazim (European Jews), not a Sephardic (Mid- dle Eastern Jews), creation. Islam was not anti-Semitic in the way Christianity was, and it is a mistake to project Christian anti-Semitism onto Muslims.

As if Jewish migration were not enough, the Jewish arrivals were European and wealthier than the local population. Using their wealth and connections they were able to purchase good land and eventually deprived the existing peasants of the fields they had traditionally cultivated. In these circumstances it is no wonder that they made poor decisions in terms of whom they sought as leaders and allies, namely Hajj Amin al-Husseini and, during World War ii, Germany. They were, however, not driven by an irrational hostility to Jews in the European sense of anti-Semitism. They were driven by genuine grievances that deserve recognition and acknowledgement.

To the European powers there was nothing exceptional about this: they had been establishing colonies, dispossessing local populations and ruling them for centuries. The Arabs of the Middle East ruled by France were able to establish self-governing representative institutions with fewer problems than those under British rule. But a complicating factor in the case of Palestine was the British support for Jewish immigration and the nationalist aspira- tions of this group. The Zionist arrivals went about building the institutions and infrastructure they knew to be necessary preparations for statehood. The Jews of Palestine, the Yishuv, moved quickly to create their own, separate institutions of statehood. They elected their own assembly, the Vaad Leumi, built up a strong trade union and labour movement, the Histadrut, estab- lished schools, universities, medical services and legal system, and in June 1921 set up an underground defence organization, the Haganah. They ig- nored, or were unaware of, Arab grievances. For the most part they saw the Arabs as obstacles and regarded them with contempt, hostility and fear. They